The present invention relates to semiconductor devices, and in particular, to semiconductor devices with variable pin locations.
Semiconductor devices (e.g., integrated circuits (ICs)) have wide-reaching and varied uses in the technology industry. Predominantly, semiconductor devices are used as the building blocks for computer processing devices. Semiconductor devices provide the logic by which today""s computers organize and process information. They are many different types of semiconductor devices on the market, all of differing size and configuration.
One of the differences between semiconductor devices is the number of terminals, or xe2x80x9cpinsxe2x80x9d that each possesses. As is well known, the pins of an semiconductor device provide terminals by which signals may be fed to, or issued from, the device. Some common types of semiconductor devices may include anywhere from 4 to 1000 pins per device.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional 16-pin semiconductor device 10. The semiconductor device 10 includes a plurality of pins 20 (labeled 1-16) and logic circuitry 30 coupled to the pins in a specific manner. As is known in the art, the pins 20 are assigned certain functions at the time of manufacture of the device. For instance, in the 16-pin semiconductor device shown in FIG. 1, pins 1-8 may comprise input pins and pins 9-16 may comprise output pins. Of course there are various types of inputs and outputs which may be coupled to the device (e.g., clock signals, operation signals, reset signals, etc.), and each must be coupled to the logic circuitry 30 in a particular manner. More specifically, if pin 8 is a xe2x80x9cresetxe2x80x9d pin, it must be coupled to the portion of the logic circuitry which controls resetting. In FIG. 1, that portion of the logic circuitry 30 which controls resetting is presumed to be located on the xe2x80x98southxe2x80x99 side of the logic circuitry. However, in some other semiconductor device designs, the resetting circuitry may be disposed on a xe2x80x98northxe2x80x99, a xe2x80x98westxe2x80x99, or an xe2x80x98eastxe2x80x99 side of the logic circuitry 30. Thus, as will be understood, it would be beneficial to create an semiconductor device which allows any one of the pins 1-16 to be a xe2x80x9cresetxe2x80x9d pin.
The physical pin arrangement (e.g., number of pins, pin position) of an semiconductor device is determined at the time the device is manufactured, and will remain fixed regardless of the package types in which the device is enclosed. Thus, a complete and expensive new mask set will be needed each time the pin arrangement is altered.
As stated above, a problem associated with the current techniques for manufacturing semiconductor devices is that each time a new device type (with a different pin arrangement scheme) is produced, the xe2x80x9cmasksxe2x80x9d which are used to produce the device must be changed. Often times, ten (10) or more masks must be used each time a new semiconductor device is manufactured. The changing of masks adds considerably to the time and costs associated with device production.
Therefore, there is currently a need for an semiconductor device design which allows pin assignments to be varied, without the need for changing masks.
The present invention is an semiconductor device including logic circuitry, a plurality of pins, and an interface unit coupling the logic circuitry to the plurality of pins, wherein the interface unit permits any of the pins to be coupled to any portion of the logic circuitry.
The above and other advantages and features of the present invention will be better understood from the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments of the invention which is provided in connection with the accompanying drawings.